by K. J. Parker
“If your people are resigned to a nomadic life, as you put it, you could join with my people.”
For a moment, Valens wondered who the hell was sitting next to him. She was all sorts of things, he’d assumed up till now, but definitely not stupid.
“That’s a really kind thought,” he heard himself say, “but I don’t think it’d be practical.”
“On the contrary.” She was lecturing him; he felt an urge to take notes. “My people are used to life on the move. It’s not nearly as simple as you seem to think. There are many hazards and complications which you have probably not considered; understandably, since you have no experience. I can advise you, but it takes more than knowledge. You will need resources which you most likely have made no provision for. If you join with us, we will take care of you.” She paused, studied him for a moment. “If you’re concerned that I don’t have the authority to make this offer, I can reassure you that I do. My family —”
“It’s not that,” Valens said, a bit too quickly. “Well, for one thing, there’s the desert. It can’t be crossed, simple as that.”
Now she was thinking he was stupid. “We crossed it,” she said, “on our way here.”
“Yes, but most of your party died,” he snapped.
“Some of our party,” she said, as though correcting his arithmetic. “And, naturally, some of your people wouldn’t survive the crossing. At a guess, I would say between a third and a half. But in the course of three or four generations, you would make up the loss.”
“That’s —”
“Unacceptable.” She sighed. “Whereas you’re prepared to risk the decimation or annihilation of your people in the plan you’ve just outlined to me.”
Valens didn’t reply. Better not to.
“I should point out,” she went on, “based on my experience of migratory life, that even if there were no enemies searching for you, it’s quite likely that you will lose at least a third of your people in the first year, given your lack of experience and preparation. Spoiled or stolen food reserves; rivers in flood; mountain roads blocked by landslides or washed away by heavy rain; have you considered these contingencies and made allowances?”
Much better, Valens decided, when she’d just sat there and not said anything. “Of course I have,” he exaggerated. “And we’ve got people who know the country. It’s not like we’re in hostile territory …”
“The presence of the enemy,” she went on, as though he hadn’t spoken, “greatly increases the risks. You say you’re relying on reserves of supplies at specific locations. It’s inevitable that the enemy will find out about at least some of these. If just one supply dump turns out not to be there when you reach it, you face disaster. Will you have enough left to get you to the next one? And what if that one’s gone too?”
“We can live off the land to a certain extent,” he replied, trying to stay reasonable. “There’s plenty of game we can hunt.”
She smiled. “There speaks an enthusiast,” she said, insufferably. “You imagine that your hobby can become a means of survival. Hunting is an essential part of my people’s lives, but we know from experience that it’s not enough. You’ll have to do better than that, I’m afraid. Compared with the risks you face by staying in your own country, the losses from crossing the desert seem moderate, if anything. And fighting the Mezentines …” She shook her head. “You should come to us,” she said. “It’s the only sensible course open to you.”
But I’m not going to, because I’m not going to let you turn my people into savages. It took rather more effort not to say that than he’d have thought. “I’ll have to think about it,” he said
“If you must. It shouldn’t take you long to decide.”
Back to silent sitting. When Valens realized he couldn’t take the silence any longer, he leaned forward and told the driver to stop the coach. An escort trooper rode up to see what the matter was.
“Get my horse,” Valens told him. “I’m going to go and inspect something.”
“May I ask … ?”
“No.”
Something at the other end of the column, as far away from her as I can get. As soon as his horse was brought up, he mounted and waved the coach on, then sat still for a while, watching the carts go by. The mountain in the distance, the crown of the Sow’s Back, was only vaguely familiar to him. When was the last time he’d been out here? He wasn’t sure; quite possibly, when his father was still alive. They’d come up here one summer after mountain goats and chamois — a complete waste of time, they’d misjudged the onset of the breeding season, the she-goats had all been in kid and were therefore out of bounds, and there was no point hunting he-goats in the rut. His father had sulked and picked fights with everybody who got in his way. Not a place with happy memories. So; if that was Maornina, and that spur to the west was the Shepherd’s Crook, then the range he could just see on the horizon was Sharra, over in Eremia. Too close, he decided. Not a good idea to hang about here any longer than they could help.
A harassed-looking junior officer cantered up to him, to tell him there was a problem. Six carts in the middle detail were breaking up; the weight of the armor had cracked the front-side frames, and they’d had to pull off the road before the cracks sheared right through. The problem seemed to be a result of the way the armor had been mounted — a three-quarter-inch bolt hole drilled through a load-bearing timber, weakening it and allowing too much weight to rest on an unsupported member. With all the potholes …
Valens made an effort not to groan aloud. “It sounds serious,” he said. “Are many other carts likely to have the same problem?”
The officer nodded. “It’s the half-lock carts and the bow wagons,” he said. “The high-sided carts are all right, there’s enough strength in the frames to take the stress. But when they were drilling the holes for mounting the armor, they only had the one set of jigs. If we carry on much further without fixing it, there’s a danger we’ll lose about a fifth of the carts.”
“All right.” Valens stole another look at the mountains; Sharra peering over their shoulders, like a nosy old woman spying on her neighbors. “Get up to the front and call a general halt; find someone to organize a survey, find all the carts likely to have the problem, have them fallen out so they can be worked on. Get three squadrons of cavalry back here to guard them when the rest of the column moves on. And find Vaatzes, and that sidekick of his, Daurenja; I want a fix for the buggered-up wagons, top priority. I’ll be back at my coach.”
But Vaatzes, it seemed, was nowhere to be found, and neither was Daurenja. That evening, another equally harassed-looking junior officer reported that he’d made inquiries, and nobody could remember having seen either of them since the column left the city. Meanwhile, an ad hoc committee of carpenters and wainwrights had been considering the problem. Their advice — far from unanimous — was to nail on big slabs of batten across the cracks on the already damaged carts and see what happened. If that worked, they could fix any further casualties the same way. If it didn’t work, it was their unanimous considered professional opinion that the whole column was screwed.
Valens had sent Mezentius off to supervise the cavalry screen, and the rest of the general staff had more than enough to do; that just left him. He’d always prided himself on his ability to delegate, but it had one serious disadvantage. It meant he was stuck in the coach, alone with his wife; nobody to talk to.
“Why have we stopped?” she asked.
He explained.
“I warned you,” she said. “Your vehicles aren’t designed for this kind of work; and the armor just makes things worse. You’d be better off removing it, before it wrecks all your wagons.”
The thought had crossed his mind. “We can’t do that,” he said. “I thought I’d explained all that, about how —”
“Yes. But if the armor is breaking up the wagons, you have to remove it. You have no choice.”
Vaatzes, he thought bitterly; I hate the fact that I need him. Of course, if he was the engi
neering genius he’s cracked up to be, he wouldn’t have drilled all those holes in the wrong places, and we wouldn’t be having this problem. (At the back of his mind he had a vague recollection of a memo from Vaatzes complaining that the short-frame jigs were behind schedule because the jig-makers had buggered them up somehow, and quite possibly they wouldn’t be ready on time. He ignored it.) If and when he turned up … But perhaps he wasn’t going to turn up. Desertion, assassination, or maybe just forgotten about in the rush to leave and left behind; and his odious associate as well, which wasn’t promising. The thought that Vaatzes might change sides, betray them all to the Mezentines, hadn’t really seemed worth considering before. The Mezentines would never forgive him; his only chance of survival lay in sticking close to the Vadani, making himself indispensable. He’d done that. He should be here, when he was needed.
Odd, then, that he wasn’t.
Too big and unsettling a problem to tackle now; better to hide from it behind all the lesser, more immediate problems, and hope it’d go away. He climbed out of the coach, stopped the first officer he saw, and ordered him to round up the carpenters and joiners. Shouting at them would take his mind off the ghastliness of the mess he was in, and might goad them into doing something useful.
No such luck. They looked away, shook their heads, tutted, sighed; can’t patch up splintered frames, got to cut out the busted timber and replace it with a new one. Could try letting in a patch, but that’d take time; could try wrapping the split in rawhide, but couldn’t promise anything; nailing on battens would be as good as anything; bolting them on would be better; could try it, but it probably wouldn’t work. Could’ve told you this’d happen if you go boring holes in frames. No help at all.
His father would have had them all strung up, as an example to all tradesmen who failed to work miracles on demand. Instead, he thanked them for their time and told them he was sure they’d do their best. Then he went to look for Mezentius.
“We can’t stay here,” Mezentius told him. “Far too close to the border. They’ve been sending patrols out along the river valleys below Sharra for some time; quite likely they’ve got watchers on the Sow’s Back by now. Maybe they already know we’re here. If we stay put, you can make that a certainty.”
Infuriating to hear your own depressing thoughts echoed by someone else. “I don’t think it’s as bad as all that,” Valens lied to himself. “Even if they’ve seen us already, they’ve got to report back, gather their forces …”
“There’s a full squadron stationed at the Unswerving Loyalty, last I heard. Probably double that by now.”
“Well, we can handle two squadrons. And it’d take them two days to get here.” Mezentius’ frown expressed entirely justified skepticism, which Valens ignored. Am I turning into Orsea? He panicked for a moment. “And suppose they do come? I don’t know about you, but I’d have no worries at all about fighting off a cavalry attack here, on a rocky hillside. They couldn’t ride, they’d have to dismount and fight as infantry. In fact, I’ve half a mind to stay here and see if they do come. The sooner we start this war …”
Mezentius was staring at him. He closed his eyes, as if trying to wash the image out of them.
“That bad?” he asked.
“It’s understandable,” Mezentius replied; he could hear the restraint in his voice. “The strain’s getting to all of us, and now this stupid thing with the carts …” He shook his head. “If you want my considered opinion, I would prefer not to engage the enemy right now.”
Valens took a deep breath. “Agreed,” he said. “Not now, or ever. But certainly not now.” He stood up. “I’ll go and plead with the carpenters a bit more, see if I can fire up their imaginations. And please, ignore what I said just now. I’ve been talking to my wife. It’s not good for me.”
Mezentius laughed, but nervously. “Understood,” he said. “Good luck with the carpenters. Did you find out where that bloody Mezentine’s got to, by the way?”
When he reached the broken wagons, he found the carpenters standing round looking sad. They explained that they’d thought about it some more, and they were pretty sure that nailing on battens wasn’t going to work, so there didn’t seem much point in starting.
Valens swallowed his anger. He was getting used to the taste of it. “Try it anyway,” he said.
They explained how the damage should be repaired, by removing the entire damaged timber and replacing it. They could more or less guarantee that that would work; however, it would probably take several days, even if they had suitable material, which they didn’t. They could go up the mountain and look for ash trees of the right size and width, though ash didn’t usually grow well in this soil; that wouldn’t really help, however, since green timber would be far too weak, and they’d be wasting their time. But if that was what Valens wanted them to do …
He smiled. “Let’s try the battens,” he said.
They nodded silently. He could tell they were waiting for him to go away, so they could carry on standing about looking miserable. “I’ll stay and watch, if I won’t be in the way,” he said. “I like watching craftsmen at work.”
It didn’t take them long. They unshipped lengths of batten, cut pieces to size and nailed them on. The horses were brought up and backed into the shafts. The wagons began to move. The sound of the battens cracking was audible ten yards away.
“Oh well,” Valens said. “We tried.”
The carpenters explained that they’d been pretty sure it wasn’t going to work. However, they would give it some thought and try to come up with something else.
Some junior officer he didn’t know brought him the inventory he’d asked for. Over a third of the column were bow-waisted or half-lock. He gave up the idea of abandoning them and trying to distribute their loads among the rest of the carts. He thanked the officer and went back to the coach.
“Have you solved the problem?” she asked.
“No.”
She nodded. “How many … ?”
“About a third.”
The interruption didn’t seem to have bothered her. “In that case, you have only one option. You must remove the armor from the affected vehicles. Of course, this will seriously compromise your plan for using the carts as a mobile fortress. You can, of course, put some of the undefended carts in the middle of the formation and so shield them from attack, but —”
“Not all of them,” Valens said. “Which means there’ll be a great big weak patch somewhere in the wall, which we’ll have to defend some other way. We could concentrate the cavalry and men-at-arms —”
“To some extent.” In other words, forget it. He wondered if she was enjoying his failure, but it didn’t seem likely. Any sort of pleasure seemed beyond her completely. “You would be better advised to move out as quickly as possible, and head directly for my people’s territory. At least you can be sure that the Mezentines won’t follow you into the desert.”
“We aren’t going anywhere near the desert.”
“You have no choice.”
He left without replying. Outside, he stood for a moment and looked at the line of halted wagons. People were standing about in groups, talking quietly or not at all. Horsemen rode up and down the line, carrying messages, inspecting, relaying orders. They were worried, but it was all under control; they knew he could be trusted to sort things out. To be trusted, relied on, even loved; he felt the pain of it deep inside, the way a man with an arrowhead buried too deep inside to be extracted feels it every time he moves. I’ve killed them, he thought, just like Orsea killed the Eremians: for duty, for love.
“Is there anything I can do?”
He turned his head, and just then, in his mind, it was like looking into a mirror. “Orsea,” he said. “I’m sorry, I was miles away.”
“I gather there’s some problem with the carts,” Orsea said. He had that stupid, sad look on his face, that preemptive admission of guilt that made Valens want to say, It’s all right, this time it’s not your fault.
That would be a lie, of course, since it was Orsea’s fault they were here; Orsea’s sense of duty, compounded by Valens’ love. “Can’t Vaatzes suggest anything? It should be right up his street, this sort of thing.”
“Vaatzes isn’t here.” Valens didn’t want to snap, but he couldn’t help it. Orsea had been born to be shouted at. He was wearing the fashionable long-toed riding boots that were useless for walking in; they made him look like some rare breed of marshland bird. “He’s disappeared, and so’s his assistant. But we’re working on it.” He scowled. “You don’t happen to know anything about woodwork, do you?”
“No.”
“Of course not. Me neither. Useless, aren’t we?” He laughed. “Oh, we know lots of stuff: how to train hawks, how to run a council meeting, the correct way to address an ambassador, how to use archers to cover an infantry advance. Pity that a few bits of broken wood can screw us up completely. I don’t know.” He turned away; the sight of Orsea’s face made him want to lash out. “Maybe we should just jump on our horses and ride away, leave the rest of them to sort it all out for themselves. They couldn’t be worse off without us than they are already.”
“That’s not true,” Orsea said; he sounded bewildered, like a child who sees his parents arguing. “You’re good at this. You can deal with it.”
If it had come from anybody else, he might have tried to believe it. “My wife thinks we should dump the armor and make a run for it, head for her territory, the Cure Hardy.” He stopped, as though there was something wrong with his mouth. “She thinks we’d be safe there. A lot of us would die trying to cross the desert, but not nearly as many as we’d lose if we carried on with the original plan.” He turned sharply and looked Orsea in the eye. “What do you think? Is that what you’d do, in my place?”
Orsea seemed to shrink back, as though Valens had hit him. “I’m the last person —”
“Yes, but I’m asking you. What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
Valens felt the energy seep out of himself. “Well of course you don’t, you haven’t got all the facts. I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like making a decision like that.”
